


Letting Go

by Charlie9646



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, America, Angst, Arguing, Author likes history a little too much, Banter, Black Hermione, F/M, Gay Severus Snape, Harlem, Historical AU, Historical References, Inspired by Art, Kissing, Lily Evans Potter & Severus Snape Friendship, M/M, Muggle AU, New York City, Roaring 20s AU, Severus & Hermione friendship, Severus plays the piano, Vague references to accents, alcoholic Tobias Snape, bar au, mentions of minor character death, mixed race Severus Snape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 14:42:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29297574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charlie9646/pseuds/Charlie9646
Summary: Severus Snape, ostracized jazz pianist, has found his home in a bar in Harlem. Comfortable in the the live he's made for him, things are turned upside down when he meets Remus Lupin, the southern distiller who holds the same desires as Severus.
Relationships: Eileen Prince/Tobias Snape, James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Remus Lupin/Severus Snape
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14
Collections: Love Fest 2021





	Letting Go

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ada_Lovelaced](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ada_Lovelaced/gifts).



> Thank you meditationsinemergencies for alpha/Betaing this, thank you Ada_Lovelaced for the art that led to this idea, and thank you Dark Arts Society on Facebook for running the exchange for Valentine’s Day.
> 
> Warning this a Muggle AU, there is no magic and is very much heavily American. They are hopefully still themselves in this. If magic is more your thing I have other things with these two that might be more your thing, but I hope you will give this a chance.

If you asked him, Severus Snape was many things. He would describe himself: a pianist, a New Yorker, a son of immigrants, and an Irish and Cuban man. He was a lover of books, Jazz, the sweet taste of a pipe between your teeth, and the sounds a man made when you had his cock in your mouth. Others might call him a sodomite, a bastard, an orphan, a negro lover, a halfbreed, and, if they were creative, a spic. His mother had taught him as a small child when they walked through certain areas of the city to cover his ears and keep his head down. It did not matter what folks said but that did not mean her boy had to listen to it. “Be like Jesus,” she would say and turn the other cheek. 

His father, on the other hand, was a very different story.

Tobias had always been ready for a fight at the drop of a hat and sometimes you didn’t even need to drop the bloody hat. His father was a proud Irish man, a freedom fighter—which he called himself, but by the time his son knew him, he had long succumbed to the bottle.

His mother claimed that her Toby was a good man, but Severus didn’t believe her. Good men didn’t leave their wife living on a line of credit from the corner store and the kindness of strangers. Good men didn’t beat their wives and children. Good men were not like his father, no matter what Eileen said. It didn’t matter either way now; Tobias was dead, the drink sucking the life from him like a vampire long before his time, and Severus’ mother following soon after. To bury your parents before you were even a man carved scars, but he had been luckier than most. Kingsley had taken him in two days after. He had found him after the owner of his parents’ apartment had kicked him out. He had been sleeping outside of the club and eating out of trash bins. America was not kind to the least of them, but sometimes Americans were kind, or good ones were. 

Kingsley did not judge him, nor did he ask questions about what Severus did with other men behind closed doors. But it was clear that the man just didn’t want to think about it. The man was like the father he had never had in all the ways that mattered. Whatever Kingsley Shackbolt asked Severus Snape would do, but the man also did not ask much. He asked him to play the piano in the club while Hermione Jean Granger sang, but most of all, he asked him to sign his name on any papers as if he were the club’s owner and not an employee. Neither man was white or better yet  _ right,  _ not in how those who sat in power defined it, but one of them could pass as it and the other could not. It was a gift and a curse. It was the gift of being able to keep those he loved safe and curse because if he crossed a line around someone who wanted to make a point? Severus would be punished for more than just his actions, but the belief he was being uppity and trying to rise above his station.

Whatever happened was going to happen no matter what he did, but it wasn’t like many white politicians were coming to Harlem, and if they were? It wasn’t to arrest a brown man for claiming that he was white. This was his home and these people were his family. Severus lovingly ran his fingers over the ivory keys of his piano. Someone wrapped their arm around his shoulders, causing him to jump. His fingers slipped off the keys causing the instrument to let out a few strangled notes. 

“How are you doing?” Hermione asked, her mouth on his ear, and her long curls were brushing against his cheek. Then just as quickly pulling away from him. Her floral-scented perfume was filling his nose. Her accent was slipping into the twang of her place of birth. It was smooth like whiskey and deep like a river. Something was comforting and safe about it even though he had never been there himself. Something about it just felt right. Hermione was sent to New York from Alabama by her father to go to college but after his death, he had two options: go home, where her smart mouth would lead to trouble, or stay and find work. The rest they could say was history. Kingsley had hired Hermione not only for her voice but also for her shrewd nature with business. Severus could nearly hear the wheels in the woman’s mind turning. 

“I am alive if that’s what you’re asking,” Severus murmured. 

She was beautiful if women were your thing, and they were not his. She sat next to him in a burgundy dress with a slit clean up to her hip, a white rabbit fur wrap pulled tightly around her shoulders, and lips painted a glistening ruby red even in the dim light of the room. Her brown eyes were bright and warm. Hermione leaned over, resting her chin on his shoulder. They were friends and some might call them good friends if he was anyone but himself. Severus Snape preferred to keep a distance from others, it was just safer—his father had taught him that quite well. 

“Surely you didn’t just want to spend time with me, now did you?” he asked. 

“A delivery is here,” Hermione said. “And Kingsley wanted me to remind you to be good.”

“I am good.”

“You flirted with Potter’s wife!”   
  


Severus pulled away from her and turned, wringing out his hands, “I have known Lily since we were children.” 

Lily Evans Potter had grown up three doors down from him. Her family were Irish just like his father had been, but, unlike Tobias, Mr. Evans kept his job more than six months and didn’t drink all of his money away. They had been friends of sorts back when they were children, but things that mattered to adults did not matter to nine-year-olds. It did not matter that her sister Petunia called him all sorts of names, but she was not his friend, Lily was. Their friendship was something that they had promised each other would last a lifetime. It had not. Boys and girls became men and women, and once that happened? Everything had changed, but maybe that was for the best. His friend had married a man just like her father and his father before him, but that was to be expected. That was just the way the world worked. That didn’t change the small part of him that hoped Lily would have followed her dreams and became something else, something more like she had always spoken about. 

Those, however, were just murmurings of children from a time so long ago. They were no better than fairy tales, and he should forget about them. Lily Potter was happy, and he should be happy for her. 

“That’s exactly what you want, isn’t it? For him to say find someone else to buy your whiskey from?” Hermione questioned, the shock and awe filling her voice. “What has Potter ever done to you?”

“He acts like he’s better than us; that’s what he does,” he spat. “But no, honestly, mostly it’s all in good fun.”

“It won’t be all in good fun until we all end up out on our ass because next time James Potter blows your head off instead of giving you a shiner.” 

“Honestly, love, you know I have no interest in women, don’t you?” Severus laughed. “They are missing an essential thing.” He made a lewd gesture in her direction with his finger. 

“You disgust me, Severus Snape,” Hermione hissed, but she was just joking with him. “And no it’s not Potter this time; he sent someone else, now why don’t you go do your job and deal with him?”

“Did he send Sirius Black? Because he’s a million times worse.”

If James Potter was a shoot first and ask questions later type, Black was a volcano waiting to explode. He was not a man who had come from the bottom like the rest of them, clawing his way back up to the top. Sirius Orion Black had been born wealthy. He had only left that world when his mother had become so angry with him about something that she had tossed him out on his ass. No one knew what it had been, but it had to have been something relatively big to cause him to be disowned. 

“No, it’s not Black; Kingsley hates him even more than you do. It’s someone new, someone different and it won’t matter much if you keep him waiting much longer. Now go deal with him, I have my own work to do.”

“Keep your hands off Bessie, Hermione,” Severus snapped, lighting his pipe as he did. “She’s mine, and you know that.”

“Men,” she muttered as he made his may outside. “Naming all sorts of things after women. Snape, you don’t have to worry. I will keep my hands off your stupid piano.”

“Thanks, love.” He said it because it pushed her buttons. 

“Don’t call me love, Snape!” 

Severus did not bother to snark back at her, it just wasn’t worth it. The woman was right; he did, in fact, have to deal with Potter’s new employee, whoever he turned out to be. Their stocks were running low and no matter how much people enjoyed Hermione’s singing or him playing, it was not the reason they came. People came in the door because they wanted to drink and forget about their lives outside of the bar’s walls. People who usually would not even be on the same street sat shoulder to shoulder; there was something deep and foreboding about liquor. It could ruin a family, but it could bring you joy. It could cause you to spend every dime you had, or you could make your living off of it. The same reason why Severus had ended up outside of Kingsley bar the death of his parents which his father’s drinking had caused. It was also the exact reason why the other man even had the means to take him in. 

Whiskey was both Severus Snape’s monster in his nightmares and the angel who came to banish them, but it was also like that for many other people, or at least he assumed. 

It wasn’t Sirius Black who was standing just inside the back entrance of the bar wrapped tightly in a dark coat with his hat pulled down low, it was a man who Severus had never seen before. The man had sandy brown hair cropped close to his head, his eyes were a striking amber color that had a haunted look to them, freckles across the bridge of his nose, and yet the oddest part of him were crisscross scars that covered his face.

“Hello,” said the man. “I came inside because of how cold it is and how long you were taking. But I am getting ahead of myself, aren’t I? My name is Remus Lupin, and I am assuming you are the Severus James told me about?” 

“Surely that man didn’t say anything nice about me, but yes I am.”

“James is interesting, but no, he didn’t say anything nice. He told me you were a bit of a bastard and somethings that I really would prefer not repeating if you don't mind. But that’s the case with many people when it comes to him. I regularly have to tell him it just isn’t worth it, but you know how he is. But he’s a good man once you get to know him, that is.”

“Agree to disagree on that,” Severus murmured. “Now should we get started on what you are here for? Or would you prefer to continue to talk about Potter?”

Remus opened and shut his mouth, he stared down at his shoes and muttered something Severus could not hear. He fought the desperate urge to make a snarky comment to the other man. Remus was not James even if he worked for the man. He did not sound like he was from around here his voice had a lull to it, a deep sound to it that reminded Severus of the bottom end of a scale of music, it sounded like the bluegrass and gospel singers on the radio Kingsley listened to regularly. It othered the man from the rest of the people here in the city and even Severus himself. Yet it was like a song that had been sung. It sounded like the mountains and a fiddle being played by an expert hand. 

Remus Lupin was doing things to him things that Severus would prefer not to feel. The feeling of the man’s amber eyes on him sent butterflies to his stomach and shivers up his spine. It did not matter not one stupid bit. Lupin was surely like any other man of this time and this place. Men were straight, men liked women, and then there was him the strange creature who stuck out like a railway spike. Their shoulders brushed against one another as Severus pushed passed him. He shoved aside those feelings; it did not matter either way he had a job to do, and it was not worrying about Lupin. 

“Did Potter bother to read the note that Kingsley sent over?” He grumbled. “Or are we going to be once again to once again be missing half of what we asked for?” 

Lupin nodded, biting his bottom lip but didn’t say anything. 

“Does a cat have your tongue or something or did the whiskey just fry your brain?” Severus grumbled. 

“Must you be such a jerk?” Remus asked as he opened the back door, clearly, he did not expect an answer. “Or is it just a talent that you have? Because I have never done anything to you, yet you feel the need to act like I kicked your dog! What’s wrong with you, Snape, because we are going to have to deal with each other more than just this time.”

It was then that Hermione came running up out into the snow with both of them. She thankfully had pulled on her coat, so at least she wouldn’t freeze. Granger seemed to be unable just to leave things be. “Sorry, Mr Lupin, Severus is just... he plays the piano better than he does anything else. Sometimes I wonder why we even keep him around, but I can get you dinner if that would make things better. It can be an apology of sorts.” 

“It’s fine, Miss, but the dinner does sound rather good so I might take you up on that offer,” the man’s sheepish voice and the blush that covered his cheeks giving him away. 

Severus tried his very best to ignore both of them, pulling out his pipe and lighting it. It was jealousy that seemed to bleed into his very core. Most of the time? He was okay with being different, being unlike the rest made you interesting. It could make your life fun, but it also made you someone who people kept at a distance. You became someone who if given a choice, they would not choose to be like you. You became a reminder of all the things wrong in the world, and that was even if they were willing to accept you or at least that’s what he felt. It meant that it was better to keep everyone at a distance even if it felt like someone was trying to skin him alive at that moment. He knew he shouldn’t have  _ strong _ feelings about a stranger, about a man who barely even knew his name, and yet it was an unshakable feeling that had burrowed itself inside of him. 

“Severus,” she growled. “Stop staring off into space and help us with these, we got boxes instead of barrels this time, and we can’t do it alone, come on and hurry up would ya?” 

She didn’t pause once in her somewhat rambling sentence. Hermione tended to get like this when she was happy, and the someone who was making her so was Remus. However, Severus did as she asked him, ignoring the knowing look she gave him when he walked back into the bar, but he did dodge her hand when she reached for him. They made quick work of it, stacking them behind the bar one by one. Remus kept looking at him as if he wanted to say something but he didn’t. Severus’ mind went to a million places of what that might be and none of them were good. When they finished, Severus dug into the pocket of trousers for the moment to be rid of the man. 

_ ‘Maybe it would have been better to deal with James,’  _ he thought. Remus licked his lips and took a step closer to Severus his hands shoved into the pockets of his suit jacket. His coat and hat had long ago been set aside. His tie hung loosely around his neck and was a shiny red like an apple. His cheeks were rough with stubble. His trim waist and broad shoulders called to him. He was beautiful in a way that only a man could be. He had no right to be so handsome. He had no right to draw Severus in as if he were a siren, but surely he did not know what he was doing and even if Remus? Severus would bet anything that he didn’t care. 

“What did I ever do to you?” Remus asked. “It’s like from the moment you saw me you had hated me.”

“Nothing,” Severus muttered, holding out the money, hoping he would take the money and be gone. Quietly under his breath, he added, “Nothing that matters at least.” 

“You don’t even know me,” the brown-haired man growled, his voice sounding like Tobias’ now—like he had just come off the boat. “All you see me as is James’ man, but I am barely that. Did you know I am from West Virginia? That my pa and brothers are miners? That I was going to become one, but they begged me not to? Did you know I know how to turn corn into the best moonshine you have ever tasted? Did you even know it’s called moonshine? That it's never going to be whiskey no matter how many times you call it that. Did you know that my ma died when I was a baby? That my sister raised me like I was her own before she was ten?” 

“Shut up, Lupin,” he pleaded. None of those things mattered,  _ ‘why did he need to know them. It wasn’t like it was going to change anything in the end now was it?’ _ He reached up, fingering the silver cross that hung around his neck, it had been his mother’s. Severus wore it without thought as if it was merely a part of his skin and not a necklace. He didn’t believe in God because if there was a God, he was more like the worst kind of man than the best kind. He was a father who created children only to make them suffer, but Remus didn’t know that he was assuming just like he was accusing Severus of doing. 

But the man just continued on without pause, “Did you know James and Sirius are some of the only friends I have in this town, that they accept me as I am without question? That my own father was so ashamed of me that he sent me away, and I was one of the lucky ones? Most men would bury someone like me in their back forty, but surely you don’t know that. Of course, you  _ think _ you know me! As if that cross around your neck gives you the right to claim and have it be so. Ever think that God doesn’t hate people like me because he made me this way? Of course not because that means seeing past your own overly large nose.” 

Severus’ heart swelled at those words and yet he also realized how foolish they both were being. He grabbed onto Remus by his suit jacket, pulling him closer. The man murmured, “Please don’t, I will just stay away okay. I didn’t mean to cause any problems I have this terrible habit of running my stupid mouth off. You only owe half this time, and you can keep the rest if you would like… I didn’t mean to cause any problems. God, how I am such a gosh darn fool?”

“We both are fools I think, and we will pay you what we owe ya,” Severus laughed, his worry and fear fading like smoke in the wind.

“You don’t have to…”

“We do. Kingsley won’t owe anyone anything, even James Potter.”

“He won’t. I swear it.” The shorter man insisted.

You will take the money, and I will hear no more of it, understood? You see, Remus Lupin, I am like you; I like other men, and I think I like you. You don’t have to worry about me turning you in because if I did I would be turning myself in.” 

There was something rather odd about saying that, something strange that sank into his bones like fire but it was surely one that not even water could put out. 

“It’s the first time I have ever said that you know,” he said. “The few men I have been with? We don't talk about it. I don’t think I know most of their names and if I do it could just as easily be a fake one. It's just safer for everyone that way, but I am sure you know that.” 

Remus ran a thumb over Severus’ cheek causing him to sigh. “It’s the first time I said it too. I have only been with a boy I grew up with and his pa caught us red-handed. I think that’s why my pa sent me away. Safer that way he said. I just…”

Severus said softly, trying to calm the other man who like he was just about ready to jump out of his own skin it might be from excitement or it could be from something far worse. “It’s hard when you feel like you're so alone, isn't it? Like you’re the only person like yourself and there is no one else in the world and it hurts. You fear that someone else might figure it, you are angry about finding someone attractive or wanting them because it’s something you will never have. Desire for them is not dangerous, but for us it is and it might always be.”

“I don’t think so. I think one day it’s going to get better. I think one day people are going to look back and think about how silly it was to fear such things.”

“Part of me hopes you're right, but I doubt it will ever be that way.”

Remus leaned up and ran a hand through Severus’ hair crashing their lips together only to pull away a moment later. “I guess we'll just have to wait and see on that, won’t we? There is a beautiful world out there if only you let it in.”

Severus didn’t say anything, but he did pull Remus up and kissed him. It didn’t matter if this lasted forever, it didn’t need to, but he wouldn’t turn it down if it did. Yet he let his mind wander to all this could be and all this might one become. There was a whole wide world out there, yet there wasn’t any other place he would rather be in this instant. 

Who would have ever thought he had James Potter of all people to thank for that? But then stranger things have happened, haven’t they?

Remus pulled away from him and whispered, “Will you tell me about yourself, Severus? Since I just told you my own life story?”

“I will, but I don’t even know where to start?” 

His lover laughed, “You start from the beginning, Sev, that’s where you start.”

“You're lucky you're handsome, Lupin,” he muttered. “Because no one gets to call me that.”

“Well, I think it suits you,” Remus mused. 

Severus leaned over and whispered into the other man’s ear, “I think there are a million things that suit you, but we will just have to wait and see on that one since you asked me to tell you my life story first.” 

“Now get on with it, would you, please?”

He sighed and started from the beginning. “My father Tobias Snape was born in Galway, Ireland. He was like many of his generation, was a second son and inherited nothing, so he came to this country looking for a better life. My mother was born in Havana, Cuba. She found work as a seamstress in the garment district and friends of theirs had introduced them when they both were nineteen....”

This was a story like any other and yet it was also his. In this country, there were thousands of them and yet it was nice to be able to tell it. Remus hung onto his every word as leaned against the bar and Hermione was thankfully nowhere to be found. Maybe Luna had come to visit or maybe she was looking over the books for Kingsley, but he was snapped out of those thoughts by Remus’ touch and it sent shivers up his back, yet he continued on with his story they had all the time in the world for everything else or at least he hoped. 

This country was like a patchwork quilt like the ones his mother used to make when he was a child. He sat there by the fire resting against her knee as she stitched the pieces together. He could still smell her perfume, and hear his father’s booming laughter as he listened to the radio. He missed them still it was a wound in his side that never would heal. They both had their problems but they were still his parents. This country and the people in it made up of patches of many colors, Kingsley was a sapphire color like the man’s favorite shirt, Hermione a burgundy like her dress, Remus was red, Lily an evergreen, his mother lavender, his father a steely blue-grey like his eyes, and maybe Severus himself was rich black, but that was quite silly, wasn’t it? That wasn’t something you would put on a statue or maybe it should be. Severus continued with his story and Remus told more of his own. They were safe like this and accepted, and how wonderful that was. 

Sometimes you must let go to move on, but sometimes you have to simply let someone in. 

  
  
  


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End file.
